XP Pro activation wierdness

About a month ago (on June 20th to be exact), I was working on this PC running XP Pro SP1. It was activated, all drivers installed, running a bit slow due to some minor malware and lack of maintenance. So I cleaned the malware, did the maintenance (CCleaner, defrag, etc) and installed SP2 from a CD I use to install SP2 all the time; I got it from Microsoft awhile back. I downloaded and installed all Windows updates. Everything is running perfectly now; it's nice and fast, smiles all around. So the PC's owner takes it home, uses it for a day or two ('til June 22nd) and then goes on vacation. Now, when we try to log on, we click on the user name and it says we're not activated, do we want to activate now? Click yes, and we get a 2nd window that says "Windows has already been activated. Click OK to exit." So we click OK, it goes back to the log in screen where we click on the user name, and it loops like that. If we click no, it just loops like it normally would. I booted once in safe mode and was able to log in; I haven't booted into safe mode again 'cuz I don't want to chance getting locked out completely. So, how do I fix this? I know it's activated, XP tells me activated, but then says it's not.... H E L P ! ! ! !

hd2k
(jeez- you'd think I was writing a freekin' novel! )

 

Problem solved! The main thing was that the freekin Activation Wizard wouldn't open to let me try to re-activate. I had to regedit in safe mode and expand a system file or two from the XP CD, reboot in normal mode, and then the Activation Wizard opened and allowed me to activate! :dood :celebrate